


On Fire Off the Shoulder of Orion

by scioscribe



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 23:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15230730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: After the battle with Hela, Heimdall finds his powers fading.  He's not used to only being able to see what's in front of him.





	On Fire Off the Shoulder of Orion

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Blade Runner_ , because it couldn't not be.
> 
> Slight pre-Thor/Heimdall vibes. I continue to love "Sad Asgardians Comfort Each Other with Booze" and "After _Ragnarok_ , Lots of Boring Council Meetings and No Thanos."
> 
> Herewiss13 points out in comments that a spaceship being low on power would (authorial hand-waving and dubious artistic reasons aside) make it hot rather than cold. My goof, so for the sake of this, just pretend there is some coherent engineering reason why that is not the case here, since I am too fond of "people huddling together in the cold" to change it now.

He should not have kept it a secret at all, yet nonetheless he would have thought he could’ve kept it for longer, but no: he fell out of usefulness faster than he’d ever imagined.

Banner kept what he called their minutes—“More like hours,” Valkyrie said—and he wrote with a neat hand and the precision of his Midgardian trade, putting _(sp?)_ after the names of people and planets he did not know, putting _resolved_ whenever one of their problems had an actual, achievable solution.  So Heimdall’s resignation from his post was duly recorded.  Heimdall could take Banner’s book down, if he liked, and look at the ordinary business to either side of the pertinent lines.  It was a council meeting like any other.

 _The Statesman_ had been running on a marginal fuel supply for the last few days.  Everything they had was funneled into pushing them toward the nearest docking station: engines ran full bore and everything else took a hit.  Including the heat.  The council meetings at least had the small warmth of so many bodies packed into a tight space, but even that wasn’t enough to stop their shivering.  Only Loki was unaffected by it, but that was no great boon, as by being unaffected by it made him even testier than usual.

“How bad a fight?” Thor was saying.

Valkyrie seesawed one hand.  “Nobody would have paid any money to see it, if that’s what you’re asking.  Cuts and bruises.”

“What was it over?”

“One of them didn’t like the other one’s hair.  I can’t believe I had to say something that stupid out loud, but there you go.”

“Right, well, let them off with a warning.”

“A warning of what?” Loki said.  “We don’t have a brig to throw them in and they know you’re hardly going to eject them out the airlock for a scuffle.”  His tone seemed to imply that he considered this a character default on Thor’s part.

“No brig,” Valkyrie said, “but plenty of restraints.”

“I hate this ship,” Thor said, letting his eyes fall half-closed.  “Fine.  Let them off with a warning that if they keep on with their brawls, they’re going to find themselves in misappropriated bindings with mysterious stains.  What else?”

“There’s a butter shortage,” Banner said, _butter_ stammered from his teeth chattering together, which set off Loki:

“Tell them to take what butter they have left and use it to ease them _fucking_ themselves.  This is the king’s council, not an assembly of grocers.  Butter is not a necessity.”

“You were really called Silvertongue?” Valkyrie said.  “I think I like you better now, vinegar prince.”

“Loki’s right,” Thor said.  “Tell them to—well, not that precisely, but tell whoever’s complaining that we hardly have a secret herd of cows roaming around and so they’ll have to wait for butter like they’re waiting for everything else.  Heimdall, how far are we from Meeran?”

And there it was, a question that he could not answer.

“I’ll just check the star-charts,” Loki said.

For a single moment, Heimdall considered putting it off.  He could claim exhaustion or say that he’d taken a chill that was clouding his senses; it would be easy enough to simply let Loki fetch the maps.  But that would cross whatever invisible line he had drawn—so many things were invisible now, were they not?—between silence and deception.

So he said, “I’m afraid I can no longer see such things, my king.”

He did not always call Thor that, but now it was necessary: he had to remind Thor that Thor had a duty not to pity him.

Silence fell.  Valkyrie wrapped her arms around herself, burrowing a little more into the heavy jacket she wore; her gaze was one of a soldier who had seen more wounds than she could count, of a survivor who ruthlessly believed that life went on.  Distance and compassion.  He could still see such things even if others were now beyond him.  He could see Banner’s guarded confusion.  Loki’s— _oh,_ Heimdall thought, _so you hid something from me again, my prince.  You already knew._

But Thor’s reaction, which Heimdall needed and feared more than the others, came slowly.  He said, “Can no longer see…” and only then did he seem to understand what Heimdall was telling him.  Quietly, he said, “How long have your powers been fading?”

“I was wounded by one of the dead Hela commanded.”

“Not in your eyes you weren’t.”

“Death gets in the blood,” Loki said softly.  “And spreads, like an infection.”

Heimdall nodded.  “As you say.  I should be grateful it seems to be taking only this—I have no other ill effects from the battle.  I think I would know by now if more were coming.  This is the end of it, but, well, it is the end of it, Thor.  My senses have dulled by the day.  My hearing is still a little sharper than usual, from what I can tell, and is holding steady there, but my sight is as anyone else’s.”  He took a breath, refusing to make it a deep one: he would not cling to these last few seconds, he would make himself let go.  “I must stand down as Guardian of Asgard.”

“No,” Thor said without a pause, “you must _not_.”

“Don’t allow yourself to be misled by sentiment,” Heimdall said.  “And don’t make this harder than it must be.  I’m no longer qualified.”

“And no one else is any more so.”

“Then the post stands empty.  But you have to take my resignation, Thor.”

Thor’s eye on him was steady, though anything but indifferent.   _How unlike your father you are_ , Heimdall thought, and not for the first time.  The eyepatch and the crown would trick one into expecting similarity, but it was with those two things that their resemblance came to an end.

“Not from my council,” Thor said finally.  “Your place in this room, your seat at this table: that does not change.”

“I will always be of use to you however I am able.”

“Good,” Valkyrie said, her chin jutted out just a little, defiant in her right to lay a claim to him though she knew him but little.  “Because the rest of us don’t have a clue what we’re doing.”

“Loki has stood as king twice-over,” Heimdall said.  He did not know why he would bring it up, except in thanks for Loki having kept his secret (though surely Loki had done that for his own reasons?) or in petty retribution for Loki having known his secret at all.  It would satisfy either motive, being the kind of remark that could be taken any number of ways.  “He has experience.”

Loki’s smile was thin-lipped, bitter.  “Certainly.  Though in both reigns I used you poorly, so I’m sure it’s to Asgard’s benefit now that my brother does _not_ draw on my experience.”

Banner sized up the possibilities of this conversation, said, “I’m going to go get those star-charts,” and made his exit.

“Wait, is that an option?” Valkyrie said.  “Are we just allowed to leave these when things are awkward?”

“No,” Thor said.  “If I have to stay, the rest of you have to stay.  And if Banner doesn’t come back with an actual, relevant star-chart within five minutes, Loki might get his wish of seeing someone blown out of an airlock.”

“Promises, promises,” Loki said wistfully.

Thor’s attention returned to Heimdall.  Thor would be diverted but not distracted, and clearly he wanted Heimdall to know it, to know that he had not been forgotten even though that was half what he had wished.  “None in my lifetime did more for Asgard than you.  Whatever your station in the future, I and everyone here will always know that.  And I mourn with you for what that battle cost you, though I will always be glad we fought side by side.”

“The fight was worth the wound,” Heimdall said.

Thor bowed his head to him; Loki and Valkyrie did likewise; Banner returned.  That was the end of it.  They moved on to the health of the children, the elderly, and the infirm, who were hit hardest by the ship’s altered temperature; Valkyrie thought that a few modifications might let them eke out a little more warmth for the infirmary, at least, and would see the changes made.  Banner confirmed that they were still three days from Meeran.  And the meeting, the last in which Heimdall had held the title he’d had for millennia, was thus adjourned.  One more thing gone.

“Heimdall,” Thor said before Heimdall could leave.  He waited until it was just the two of them.  “Why did you not tell me?”

Heimdall made himself smile.  “I can stand still as a statue, Thor, but I am not stone, and not perfect.  I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to say it aloud and I didn’t want you to hear it.  To see me as… diminished.  Though that is surely true.  And you had enough trouble on your mind.”

“Never so much that you must keep your grief from me.  And I think you hurt, not diminished.”

 _Then you are in error, for I know what I am, I know how far it lies from what I was._ “It is not a king’s task to give comfort.”

“Is it not a friend’s?  And it would be a foolish king who let his most trusted advisor feel his loss all alone.  Heimdall, I would listen to you, whatever you would say.  And yes, I would give you give comfort, if you would take it from me.”

Heimdall closed his eyes.  The view, to his mind, was more or less the same: he was not used to judging in terms of darkness or light or the sight of a room.  He was still used to landscapes that never ended.  He said, “I obeyed your father’s commands.  But you… even from the ashes, you will build an Asgard that deserves its name more than it ever did before.  You have more than my loyalty.  And I had hoped to offer you the best of myself.”

“You do,” Thor said.  Disregarding his station, he left his chair and knelt before Heimdall’s, looking up at him.  “I pledge you that, with all my heart.”

“Oh, get up,” Heimdall said, as if his voice had not grown thick and unreliable at the sight of Thor there at his feet.  Yet again the smile was forced, but this time it came more easily.  “A thousand generations in Valhalla just gasped in horror at the sight of a king on his knees.”

This time, he could not read Thor’s expression at all, but Thor stood.

“You have helped me,” Heimdall said.  “You do, always.  You cheer me.”  And this was true.  He believed Thor, because Thor could not be disbelieved: Thor’s sincerity shone out like sunlight.  It was a light so strong it sent away all shadows.  A constant that could be believed in, though it burned; though you might feel you had, nonetheless, a need for shade, for some patch of darkness and weakness.

He sought that out in his quarters, where he could sleep and forget himself, but he might have known after all these years that he could not deal with one brother without dealing in some fashion with the other.  As soon as he opened his door, he could tell that Loki had been there before him.

Though that took no special deduction.  Someone had left a heavy crystal decanter of whiskey on his bedside table, and he had seen Loki win it two days ago in a card game.  His eyes might have lost their strength, but his memory hadn’t.  A curious gesture.  Heimdall lay down and tried to forget it, but he could not calm his mind.  It was lucky for Thor, maybe, that Heimdall would still reflexively choose a puzzle over stupor; he hoped Thor appreciated it, because he certainly didn’t.  He stood, took the decanter and two glasses, and walked to Loki’s room.  He knocked.

“Come in,” Loki said.  He sounded wary.

“My hands are full,” Heimdall said.  “You’ll have to open it for me.”

So Loki did, letting him in wordlessly, and Heimdall poured for them both.

In place of a toast, he said, “Why the gift?  It’s not like you to easily give up a prize.”

“Does it matter?  And it’s not like me to give a straight answer to a question either, so…”  Loki tilted his glass back and forth, watching the dark amber surface of the drink wobble.

“I think you knew my news already,” Heimdall said.

“I had wondered.  I didn’t know.  But I’ve lost pieces of myself before, and I know what it looks like, especially when you’re trying to hide it.  When you know it’s gone.”  He drank.  “And I’ve never had your eyes, but I have seen the colors that only exist between the worlds, the sparks that fly when your hands drag along the walls of the Void to stop your fall.  Wonder and horror.  I know some fraction of what you’ve lost, if you want to…”  He made a face and sloshed another few fingers of whiskey into his glass.  “Talk about it.”

In Thor’s company Heimdall had mostly felt the loss of his role, of his certainty of his place.  And Loki, who had never been sure of those things, was not one to commiserate with him there.  But Loki knew other things.

The carefulness of Loki’s offer—first the bottle, in case all Heimdall wanted was a few hours of oblivion, and then the company—struck him.  It seemed worth noticing.

With all the pressure on them, with all the cold misery of the ship, with all their needs, it seemed petty to speak of how he mourned the loss of beauty and skill.  In this room, though, in this particular company, pettiness might be allowed.

He took a long swallow of his drink and let it warm him.  He said, “I used to be able to pull back the curtain at will.  I’d make the distance into a blur, a bright dark; I know the colors you saw, I named them.  I never saw the Void, but I saw a meteor shower reflected in a salt flat until there was no way of knowing what was sky and what was ground.  I saw needle-thin cities built on oceanic floors by laws of physics I couldn’t understand.  I saw the metal threads of magic that the great spiders strung between the stars in the eons before Asgard even was; ten years ago, I watched the last one break under the pressure of time and the movement of the heavens.  I cannot get used to this.  This gray room, these limitations.  It suffocates me.”

Loki nodded.  “How flat this all must seem.”

“Yes.”  He did not have to guard that fact, he supposed.  He did not have to guard anything.

“Thor will make that better for you, in time.  A little better, at least.”

Yes.  The sun to grow a life again; the shadows to admit what he could not say except in darkness.  He was glad to have seen Loki’s homecoming, at least; glad to have spoken to Thor on the far side of the universe when Thor had asked that of him.

He raised his glass.  Just a little, but enough to count.  “To time, then.”  He had never been able to see that way, never been able to shoot his attention like an arrow out across the centuries.  It seemed something new and golden to hope for.  The future.  Thor’s Asgard.

But for now he listened to the crystal ring of his glass against Loki’s.  He started telling Loki about the sandstorm glass found only an empty world.  The way the sun hit it, he said, it was like all the land had been set aflame.  Even he had had to look away.


End file.
